Farmers harvest plants every year to feed animals. Plants generally include fodder and forage. Fodder is the parts of the plant that is digestible and high in energy and is typically directly fed to the animals. On the other hand, forage is the parts of the plant that remain after the fodder is harvested and is not as digestible or as high in energy. In many plants, after farmers remove the grain and chaff and other fodder parts, approximately one half of the plant remains as forage. For example, farmers commonly harvest corn to feed cattle. However, once the kernels and other digestible parts are harvested, approximately one half of the dry weight of a standing corn plant is the forage which is comprised of the stalk, leaf, husk and the cob. Some forage is of better quality than others. Farmers generally do not use low quality forage to feed animals, other than as part of the roughage component of a diet, because of its low digestibility.
Some farmers have used alkali treatments on low quality forage to enhance its digestibility and nutritional value. For example, some farmers have treated low quality forage with anhydrous ammonia, sodium hydroxide, calcium hydroxide, or other strong alkalis to loosen the chemical bonds between the less digestible lignins and the more digestible components, thereby increasing the availability of the cell wall carbohydrates for digestion. This is because the natural enzymes found in the front stomach of cattle can effectively digest the treated forage which now has relaxed bonds.
Unfortunately, the costs and inefficiencies that are associated with such alkali treatments have limited their implementation. Currently, farmers simply gather low quality forage and place it inside of a feed truck. The farmers then add calcium oxide and water to the forage in the truck and mix all of the components together. The farmers then dispense the mixed components into a plastic agricultural bag and allow the components to sit for at least 7 days. After 7 days, the treated forage is ready to be fed to animals on the farm. This process is highly inefficient and is only capable of treating about 5 to 6 tons of forage per hour. As a result, farmers do not widely use this process.
Farmers have considered transporting forage off of the farm to a different site for treatment. However, forage generally has a high weight-to-value ratio, so it does not make economic sense to transport the forage off of the farm. In addition, the treating process involves the addition of water, which results in the treated forage being even heavier than the untreated forage. Thus, even if an off-farm site could more efficiently treat the forage, the treated forage would be even more expensive to transport back to the farm for feeding animals. Thus, it would be desirable to provide apparatuses and methods for more efficient on-farm treatment of low quality forage.